Shadows of an Empire: Fire and Ice (Volume 1)
by NuntiusTheCourier
Summary: Westeros has been invaded many times before. First by the First Men, and more recently by the Andals, but never before have the people of Planetos seen a incursion of this magnitude. From the shadows of the doom, dawned a new era and it dawned in a unrelenting wave of fire and steel. {(Pre-Conquest)}


**Prologue (Setting the Stage)**

This world had seen destruction several times before. In the distant past, so long ago that the mists of time obscure the truth and fact fades into legend, all of Planetos was covered in a thick blanket of frost and shadow for more than a generation. Hundreds of thousands died, as the land was laid to waste through famine and terror.

Proud kings and the entirety of their ancient lines froze to death in their castles on cold thrones, and entire villages were buried beneath the snow their inhabitants eternally frozen in the moment of their death with frozen blood and icy bones holding up these ghastly caricatures of the living. Women would smother their babies in their cribs rather than see their children starve due to their milk hardening within their bosom, and as they wept for the young lives that ended before they even had a chance to begin, they felt their tears freeze upon their cheeks. To the men and women who loved in this time it must have seemed to be the end of the world. The ground had frozen to be harder than steel, making it impossible to grow crops of any kind, and any game that could be found was so malnourished and small that it made the effort expended by hunting to be all but worthless.

Then the true terror of the night revealed itself. From the darkness came the Others, the White Walkers, tall and gaunt with flesh pale as milk and cold blue eyes that burn like ice and shined like blue stars. They came clad in their delicate, reflective armor that shifted with each step shifting the images of their surroundings like ripples in a clear pond. They came wielding their thin swords of pale crystal, that came alive with moonlight in battle, slicing through even the thickest of armors as if it was silk. They came mounted on pale steeds and massive spiders of hewn from frozen flesh and sinew, and behind them marched their endless armies of undead. Wights, dead men and creatures raised up by the others to serve as pawns in their game of conquest. These twisted mockeries of life varied in appearance, some were lifelike appearing as normal people if rather drunk and lacking of wit as they stumbled, while others were rotten although the magic of the Others had slowed their decay. All however possessed the bright star blue eyes of their others, and their hands and feet black and swollen with pooled and congealed blood. These endless hordes marched on all of creation, filled with a grim determination to end the living and plunge the world.

But in these dark times hope still existed, brave men fought against the great enemy of mankind, and heroes rose and fell in the long war for survival, this conflict is known as the War of the Dawn. In Westeros the main hero of this war is known only as the Last Hero, who with his merry band of companions, found the children of the forest, despite constant attacks from giants, wights, and Others. Gaining the assistance of the children, the Last Heros succeeded in repelling the undead hordes from Westeros and pushing them far into the land of always winter.

In Essos the forces of men were led by a legendary figure known as Azor Ahai, Hyrkoon the Hero, Yin Tar, Neferion, Eldric Shadowchaser and by a hundred other names. Whatever his true name what is known is that he was one of the few men capable of defeating the Others in open combat. Meeting them in battles stretching from the Hills of Andalos in the west to the Mountains of Morn in the east, cutting down hundreds of the icy terrors with his flaming sword Lightbringer. Both of these legendary men led their forces and pushed the Others and their Night King, deep into the land of always winter, finally meeting their end in an effort to buy the Children of the Forest time to finish a powerful spell that succeeded in imprisoning the dead monarch and his subject in the icy citadel known as the Heart of Winter. For the first time the world survived a disaster like none before it, humanity would survive and the survivors were made stronger for it.

Their battles won the warriors returned home to rebuild and recuperate. Millenia went by and kings great and terrible were born, lived, and died, nations rose and nations fell, and people lived their lives as best they were able. One nation of note that rose in this period was the Valyrian Freehold, founded some three millennia after the War of the Dawn.

The Freehold ruled much of the continent of essos from their home on the Valyrian Peninsula. They were made mighty by their use of dragons in their wars of conquest, along with a rather prodigious use of the mystical arts. Waging dozens of wars upon the various peoples that inhabited Essos, they claimed the nearby Empire of Ghis, the lands surrounding the River Rhoyne, the Hills of Andalos, and established colonies all along the western regions of the continent. From their towers and palaces of fused stone, dragonlords of Valyria ruled for almost five thousand years, until the world itself struck them down, in a event that would come to be known as the Doom of Valyria.

On the day of the doom, every hill within five hundred miles of Old Valyria exploded, filling the air with enough ash, smoke, and fire to kill even dragons. The earth cracked open and swallowed palaces, temples, and towns, while lakes boiled or turned to acid. The Fourteen Flames, the fiery mountains that stretched across the entirety of the Valyrian Peninsula, shattered and sent molten rock thousands of feet into the air, and crimson clouds rained down in razor sharp shards of dragonglass. The cataclysm actually shattered the Valyrian Peninsula into numerous islands and created a smoking sea of boiling water.

Other locations were affected but to a lesser scale. Hurricanes and tsunamis ravaged the coasts of the Summer Sea, from Lys to the Jade Gates, with the cities of Velos and Ghozai on the Isle of Cedars being almost completely destroyed by a particularly large tsunami. Earthquakes plagued those who dwelled inland with several cities being damaged in some way, the most notable example of which occurred in Oldtown, with the Starry Sept and the Citadel taking significant structural damage and entire levels of the Hightower collapsing.

What caused the Doom is unknown, but what is known is the effects the disaster had on the world at large. The Valyrian Peninsula was gone, and with it went the vast majority of the Freehold's power went. Hundreds of dragons were lost, along with much of Valyria's recorded history, spells, and written works. With all that gone, the Freehold couldn't hope to recover and collapsed. What followed would be some fifty years of bloodshed, as the world entered a period of bloody conflict.

In the half century that followed what remained of the Freehold fractured into more than a dozen smaller city states that began to fight amongst themselves over the lands of their former rulers. Volantis, the oldest and most powerful of these successor states, was by far the most successful in this regard managing to capture the cities of Lys and Myr, and recently have gone to war with the city state of Tyrosh. However the budding empire is beginning to slow down, as it faces greater and greater opposition from both the other former colonies of Valyria and their own subjects.

However by far the greatest threat that emerged after the Doom would come from the east. The savage Dothraki crashed into the nations of western Essos like a mighty wave, burning entire nations in an effort to create new lands for grazing and to expand the grasslands their people had inhabited for centuries. Many cities have already fallen and the only reason the vast horde of horsemen gathered by their leader Khal Mengo, have not overrun the entirety of Essos is their lack of discipline and scorn for any form of industry. This has prevented the Dothraki from becoming a true empire, and relegated them to the role of nomadic savages carried forward only by their ferocity and sheer numbers. Despite their weakness, the Dothraki have been nigh unstoppable since their emergence from the the Dothraki Sea half a century ago.

This state of affairs would continue for quite some times, with more than two generations being born into a world of bloody revolution, with conflict dominating the lives of all those who lived in the wake of Valyria's downfall. It seemed to many that this would become the new norm of the world, a new age of darkness that would destroy all that had been achieved in the past millennia.

No one was expecting things to change and perhaps that was why so many were unprepared when it came, and not even the gods could have expected how it arrived. They appeared only seconds apart, each one separated by hundreds of leagues across five different seas.

The first to appear did so in the middle of the Jade Sea, positioned between Leng, Marahai, and the Manticore Isles, and it split the sky like a massive emerald blade. Then the tear began to grow, exploding out to cover dozens of kilometers. Just as suddenly as it grew the tear started to widen, with a sound not unlike that of tearing silk, until the breach stretched across the horizon bathing the world below in ethereal green light, as baleful yellow lightning flashed out striking anything it could rach. And with every flash the breach grew wider and wider.

Than just as suddenly it began everything became still, the entire world seemed to hold its breath as it waited to see what would come next. And it came in the form of a ear splitting boom so loud that it shattered windows as far away as Jinqi, as the massive ball of light came crashing down. The shockwave of its landing sent forth waves dozens if not hundreds of feet in height that rippled out from the point of impact. And their it stayed, a massive pillar of viridescent light that split the heavens and the seas, the sheer heat which it emitted boiling the water around it sending up vast clouds of steam that were lit up every few seconds by bolts of lightning that split off from the pillar like branches from a tree trunk.

It was at this moment that more of these lights began to appear across the world. The second did so in the far north, to the east of the Kingdom of Ibben in the freezing waters of the aptly named Shivering Sea. The third made itself known in the east, nearly blocking off the Saffron Straits, the eastern exit of the Jade Sea, dividing the continents of Essos and Ulthos and causing extensive damage to the nearby city of Asshai when it appeared. Two more appeared around Great Moraq, one to the west in the Summer Sea and one to the east in the waters of the Jade Sea. The final to appear did so in the western reaches of the Summer Sea, an equal distance between Essos, Westeros, and Sothoryos, yet was large enough to be seen from all three.

The existence of the six pillars for all their brilliant glory lasted only for a scant few minutes before they faded, leaving behind vast seas of thick fog so thick it was impossible to see further than a few feet. It took hours for the fog to clear and when it did it revealed what had been hidden within the pillars.

Where they once stood now resided a series of islands ranging in size from small outcroppings of rock to massive pieces of land large enough to rival Tarth in size, and the most surprising thing was that the islands were not uninhabited. No, on each and every island there was some sign of civilization.

The smaller islands were carved into towers, lighthouses and forts of fused brown and gold sandstone, and the larger islands were practically covered by farmlands dotted by cities of marble and granite, linked by a system of cobblestone roads and highways. The greatest of these cities was located on the northern edge of the largest island within the archipelago that appeared to the west of the Basilisk Isles.

Massive walls, thirty meters tall, made of a dark grey stone surrounded the city, with dozens of domed silver towers manned by teams of archers and ballistae. The northern edge of the city that faced the coast was equally as fortified, with three sets of walls ten, fifteen, and twenty meters shielding the city. The port itself was in actuality a artificial inner harbor, called a cothon, that existed within the cities walls. It was divided into a rectangular merchant harbor followed by a protected inner harbor reserved for military use. This inner harbor was circular in shape and surrounded by an outer ring of structures divided into a series of docking bays for ship maintenance, along with an artificial island structure at its centre that housed several navy ships. Each individual docking bay featured a raised slipway, from which ships could be moved to and from the water. Above the raised docking bays was a second layers of warehouses, where oars and rigging were kept along with other supplies such as wood and canvas. On the island in the center of the cothon, there was a tower of carved marble from which the admiral in command could observe the entirety of the harbor in addition to the surrounding seas. Altogether the docking complex was large enough to house some two hundred ships. The entire structure was protected by a outer wall of coquina and the entrance to the port could be closed off with several heavy iron chains.

Within the city walls, existed fourteen walled off districts filled with row upon row of houses and shops built of stone, plaster and brick, with roofs lined with tiles made of fired clay or topped with domes of burnished copper, all connected by a webway of cobbled streets and alleyways. These buildings grew larger and more luxurious the closer one came to the southern edge of the city, with the tallest being some seven stories tall, until they stopped some fifty feet from the southern wall. Beyond that wall existed a fifteenth district that contained the crown jewel of the city and the center of its power.

There existed a fortress like no other. A massive sprawling complex of concentric defenses cunningly designed to support each other and to be abandoned by the defenders in stages so that the attacking force must fight for every square inch of ground. Interlocking walls of smooth black stone, covered with engravings and statues of warriors with tall pointed helms and scaled cloaks, rulers and priests with stern faces and draped in long robes that seemed to shift and sway in the breeze despite the material they were made of, and beasts both great and small in more forms than could be conceived by mortal man that had been carved directly into the rock along with depictions of awe inspiring deserts and jungles, that reflected a primal beauty that only nature could create.

Hundreds of thousands of small white crystals dotted the stones of the walls, they having formed long ago within their rocky womb were now were freed chose to shine in the light of the morning like burning stars, surrounded the keep with a maze of thick stone harder than steel or diamond could ever hope to be. Dozens of massive spiraling towers rise from the wall at every curve and sharp angle, giving those who garrison the citadel a view of all that surrounds their charge and who would seek to approach it.

However it was behind this starry wall that truly caught ones eye. A massive vaguely pyramidal labyrinth of courtyards and balconies, gilded temples and dreary convents, great halls and massive kitchens, and barracks and drill yards galore, all of these and more existed along with a menagerie of other chambers in a massive complex of deep dungeons and towers, that made the building seem more like a mountain carved to shape rather than any monument that mankind could hope to create.

It was within this monolith that life first stirred in the wake of the pillars. Deep below the earth, below even the darkest dungeons, existed a vault barred by heavy doors of iron, three times the height of the tallest man on planetos and covered in layer after layer of silvery glowing runes. It was here that these massive gates slowly creaked open, revealing a deep void like darkness, disturbed only by a pair of glowing blue eyes like two chips of frozen glass.


End file.
